Focusing spot manually by fader

M_ars

New Member
Hi there!
I'm intrested - can I control speed of movement of the spot light by moving a fader? For example, we have two precets, each one contains different focus pallete for a spot. I wanna move a light from one point to another by moving fader with precet #2, but I wanna reach a destination point if only fader will be at 100 %.

Really appreciate any kind of answer :)
 
Hi there!
I'm intrested - can I control speed of movement of the spot light by moving a fader? For example, we have two precets, each one contains different focus pallete for a spot. I wanna move a light from one point to another by moving fader with precet #2, but I wanna reach a destination point if only fader will be at 100 %.

Really appreciate any kind of answer :)
Hello Sir! As a general / generic answer I'll say yes. If I choose a fade time of 5 seconds to cross-fade from one look to the next, I would expect it to take 5 seconds for the image to sweep from its present location to its next. Similarly, if I chose a fade time of zero, I'd expect the lamp to move at the fastest speed it's capable of. If I chose a much longer time, let's say two minutes, the lamp would likely move as a series of small increments rather than one smooth, slow, continuous movement. I'm sure others will be along shortly and they'll probably ask you which specific fixtures with which board and which generation of software.
All the best Sir!
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
 
There are complication of using a moving head light as a follow spot. Human spot ops move their lights in straight lines. Automated lights move in arcs. i.e., if you pan a lot and don't tilt, you're essentially working like a compass. The result is undesirable in three ways.
  1. People don't walk in arcs
  2. Multiple lights necessarily have to hang in multiple locations resulting in multiple arcs
  3. As a light moves asymptotically away from itself, it move exponentially faster meaning it's very difficult to use more than one light to hit the same actor
Now Lighting Friends, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that our Cognito (or Choreo and Palette and Marquee) is the only console to solve this problem by allowing lights to fade with LINEAR MOVEMENT as well as a POLAR . It's fully explained and demonstrated in this video. You can also read the white paper on Abstract Control originally published in 2005.

For a more general discussion on how to use faders for 'busking' see this video. To my knowledge, Marquee was the first to do this "King, Queen, Jack (etc. etc.)" trick effectively, but others (notably Grand MA) can also pull this off.
 
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Hello Sir! As a general / generic answer I'll say yes. If I choose a fade time of 5 seconds to cross-fade from one look to the next, I would expect it to take 5 seconds for the image to sweep from its present location to its next. Similarly, if I chose a fade time of zero, I'd expect the lamp to move at the fastest speed it's capable of. If I chose a much longer time, let's say two minutes, the lamp would likely move as a series of small increments rather than one smooth, slow, continuous movement. I'm sure others will be along shortly and they'll probably ask you which specific fixtures with which board and which generation of software.
All the best Sir!
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
Yeah, I know about a fade time, but I'm intrested in doing it manually without setting specific time
 
If you have a Congo, you're all set. You can have your presets loaded in the main stack and ride the A/B faders up to load into the next one at your own pace.

Similarly, any time you want to have more manual control of a cross fade, ride the A/B faders up to full instead of tapping the Go button.

(I call them the A/B faders, but I'm pretty sure on a Congo one says Active above it and the other says something else. I'm talking about the pair of faders immediately next to your Go button.

If you only want to control the moving lights and not everything else, record Focus Palettes to your Masters and put your movers on a direct select.

During the show, you would select your mover(s) with a direct select, group, or typing the channel numbers in, and then as you ride a Focus Palette up on a Master Fader, the movers will progress with you and only will lock into their final position when you reach 100% on the fader.

As others have said, you're at the mercy of movers operating in arcs but if you have adequate coverage from your spots you can usually make it work even if you have to train your performers how to walk at the correct path and pace.

Usually I try to lock in the cross fade time and just use the Go button. For dancers it's easiest to have consistency they know they have to keep up with. Theater actors and actresses are a little less tame and are more likely to need you riding crossfades to match their pace.
 
Hi,
Mike summed it up well.
On a Congo, I was doing a show where I had to follow a dancer with a moving light. I knew where she would start. I had a couple of intermediate points in her cross, and I had her final position.
I recorded the points in different presets. In set-up, I set to crossfade both ways. I manually faded the light to stay with her. When I reached the end of the fade, I just started moving the faders in the opposite direction to start the fade to the next preset. In a very tight tech schedule, the dancer did the cross once with me calling out when she should stop so I could focus the light and record it. Then we ran it once with music, and we went onto the next section of the show.
Take care,
John
 

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